Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

it. He wanted her. It came to him that this was the way that Sjekso had gone,

before he had ended up dead and cold outside the Unicorn, and it failed to

matter. Her lips pressed his and oh, gods, he wanted her.

The floor wavered, and a wind swept in, laden with sweetish incense…

‘Pardon me,’ Enas Yorl said, and the couple on the verge of further intimacies

broke apart, the woman staring at him wide-eyed and Shadowspawn with a hazy

desperation. The russet silks in the room still billowed with the draught he had

set up.

‘Who are you?’ the woman Ischade asked, and at once Enas Yorl felt a small

trial of his defences, which he shrugged off. Ischade’s expression at once took

on a certain wariness.

‘Let him go,’ Enas Yorl said with a back-handed wave towards Shadowspawn. ‘He’s

admirably discreet. And I’d take it kindly. – Go on, Shadowspawn. Now. Quickly.’

Shadowspawn edged towards the door, hesitated there, with a look of violated

sanity.

‘Out,’ Enas Yorl said.

The thief spun about and opened the door, a fresh gust of wind.

And fled.

Hanse hit the stairs running, hardly pausing for the steps, never saw the figure

loom up at the bottom until he was headed straight down at the knife that aimed

at his gut.

He knocked the attacking blade aside and grabbed for arms or clothes, whatever

he could hold, fell, in the shock of the collision, tumbled with the attacker

and the blade, and lost his purchase in the impact with the ground. He hit on

his back, desperately got a grip on the descending knife hand with Mradhon Vis’s